Chen Quanguo is the Communist Party Secretary of East Turkestan (known as Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in present-day China). He was promoted to this post in August 2016, after subduing another heavily oppressed region — Tibet. Since then, he has initiated a series of unprecedented repressive measures against the Uyghur people, and ideological purges against so-called “two-faced” Uyghur officials as well as Uyghurs who earned high-respect and/or have strong influence in their own professional fields or careers (The “two-faced” is a term applied by the regime to describe the Uyghurs who do not willingly follow directives and exhibit signs of “disloyalty.”).

Chen’s regime is now treating all the Uyghurs as criminals, and all the Uyghurs with religious faith as terrorists. His government not only jailed a huge number of innocent Uyghurs (in some estimates this number is between 50,000 to 100,000), they also locked up far more people in Nazi-style concentration camps. The total number now exceeds one million, constituting more than 10% of the total Uyghur population (according to China’s 2010 census) in East Turkestan. Even more horribly, the Chen’s regime is treating those one million Uyghur men and women in very inhuman ways both in prisons and in concentration camps. In prisons, those innocent “prisoners” are tortured in a way that people living in any civilized society cannot imagine. For example, the torture includes water cells, burning female victims’ faces and bodies with cigarettes and telling them “Call your God to rescue you”, hanging by the wrists, beating with police batons, electric batons or other objects, kicking, exposure to sustained cold, blinding with a hot, bright light, forcing a prisoner to maintain a stress position for prolonged periods, prolonged deprivation of sleep, water and food, restraining for days in so-called “tiger chairs” (used to immobilize suspects during interrogations), handcuffs, and leg irons. In most cases, such abuses have resulted in deaths, or physical and/or mental disabilities.

Chen’s regime has turned more than one million Uyghurs into “Innocent Prisoners” in East Turkestan. We strongly believe that Chen’s policies and actions against Uyghurs, as exemplified above, constitute as Crimes Against Humanity, and Chen should be brought to justice for his crimes.

We, the Uyghurs, are powerless and helpless at the moment. As such, we are unable to defend ourselves against the Chinese government’s atrocities and cannot fight this battle for our survival alone. We need the support of the global community. If tens of thousands of people from around the world sign our petition, it may be possible that the United Nations will make a commitment and will act to stop the tragedy that the Uyghur people are facing today, and stop Chen Quanguo’s crimes against humanity in East Turkestan.

Please join us in our fight to end the appalling atrocities happening in East Turkestan. Please sign and share this petition. Thank you!